coral petroleum

Bankrupt Boozer's First Bankruptcy:

Coral Petroleum, Inc., Houston, Texas

On Bankrupt Boozer's bio from his campaign website, Young Boozer says he was Senior Vice President for Coral Petroleum, Inc. of Houston Texas from 1980 until 1985.

In 1980, the year Bankrupt Boozer began working at Coral Petroleum, Coral was found guilty of violating federal crude oil pricing regulations, and they were ordered to pay over $10 million in fines.

During his time at Coral Petroleum, Bankrupt Boozer gave thousands in political contributions to pro-oil candidates and political action committees (PACs).

In June of 1983 on Boozer's watch, Coral Petroleum filed for bankruptcy. Among its debts, it listed $16.9 million owed to Venezuela's state oil company. Coral was buying communist oil.

While scheming illegal profits on oil, Coral executives were living the high life. In 1985 after Coral went bankrupt, Sotheby's, the famous international auction house, auctioned a Coral Petroleum fine art collection for $7.1 million.

The son of Boozer's boss at Coral Petroleum was later sentenced to two years in prison after admitting to paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Iraqi government officials in exchange for lucrative oil contracts. The convictions were related to the Iraq U.N. oil-for-food program.

BP has promised to make Alabama whole for the disaster in the Gulf. But it is clear the only way they are going to do right is to sue them and make them do right.

You don't hire oilmen to fight oil companies. And Bankrupt Boozer was a Texas oilman for an oil company that he helped bankrupt.

Coral Petroleum Inc. filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act.

In its petition, the privately held oil trading and marketing company listed secured debt of $442 million, unsecured debt of $239.5 million and total assets of $589.3 million.

The largest unsecured creditor cited in the petition is Shell International Trading Company Ltd., part of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, with $13.7 million of debt outstanding. The company also listed debts of $8.8 million to Maraven S.A. and $8.1 million to Lagoven S.A., both subsidiaries of Venezuela's state oil company, and $8.3 million to the United Refining Company. Coral has annual revenues of nearly $6 billion.

AUCTIONS

By Rita Reif

Published: January 16, 1987

This figure, if achieved, would exceed the total of $532,620 reached last October at the sale of English furniture owned by the Music Corporation of America. A much higher total of $7.1 million was realized in the sale of 58 Orientalist paintings by 19th-century academic artists from the collection of the bankrupt Coral Petroleum Inc. of Houston in 1985. Both sales were at Sotheby's.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/16/arts/auctions.html

April 15, 2005

Low-Profile Texas Oilman Draws Spotlight for Iraqi Deals

HOUSTON, April 14 - Many people here were wondering who David Bay Chalmers Jr. was after the police arrested him on Thursday at his home in the exclusive River Oaks area on charges of directing kickbacks to the Iraqi government in exchange for access to lucrative oil contracts.

Since shifting the base of his oil-trading company, Bayoil U.S.A. Inc., here from Connecticut in the early 1990's, Mr. Chalmers, 51, has maintained a low profile in a city and in a business renowned for their swagger. Bayoil quietly developed a reputation for its expertise in acquiring oil from Iraq despite the difficulties of operating in that country.

Mr. Chalmers's success in Iraq's oil industry, though unusual for an American businessman, fits in with long history of doing business in the country. Mr. Chalmers was a broker for Iraqi oil as far back as the late 1980's, when Iraq was emerging from its eight-year war with Iran, and at one time promoted a $3 billion petrochemical complex in Iraq, which was never built.

Oil traders took note of Mr. Chalmers's connections with Baghdad in 1996 when Bayoil, as well as a company controlled by another Houston energy investor, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., chartered some of the first ships allowed to transport Iraqi oil under the United Nations oil-for-food program relief program. Otherwise, Bayoil, owned entirely by Mr. Chalmers, remained virtually unknown.

"It's of little surprise that we're learning about these guys now," said Prof. Michael J. Economides, an authority on the energy industry at the University of Houston. "Oil trading is a deliberately murky world. It's no wonder the traders are based in places like the Netherlands Antilles, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and, yes, here in Houston."

Bayoil's modest offices in downtown Houston are on the second floor of the historic Rice Hotel building, a short stroll from the federal courthouse where Magistrate Judge Calvin Botley set bail at $500,000 for Mr. Chalmers.

But David N. Kelley, the United States attorney in Manhattan, where the indictment was unsealed, said, "I don't think there's much of Bayoil left after this indictment."

In addition to the charges against Mr. Chalmers and Bayoil U.S.A., the indictment asserts that he also owns an offshore company, Bayoil Supply and Trading Ltd. in the Bahamas, that was used in the transactions under scrutiny.

Mr. Chalmers's family has a long history in the international oil business. His great-uncle Charles Ulrick Bay founded Bay Petroleum in the 1930's before becoming a high-ranking intelligence official in the Office of Strategic Services and later a ambassador to Norway, Forbes reported in 1995. Mr. Chalmers's father, David Bay Chalmers Sr., became a well-known oil trader through the creation of another company, Coral Petroleum, which ultimately filed for bankruptcy protection in 1983.

More recently, Mr. Chalmers and Mr. Wyatt, whose own business experience in Iraq stretches back to the 1970's, teamed up in January to buy a small oil refinery in Lake Charles, La., for $9 million that produces jet fuel and asphalt. Refining experts said the facility had little value, perhaps other than to show access to refining capacity on paper in order to acquire oil cargoes from Nigeria, which sometimes requires such proof

US oilman sentenced to prison in oil-for-food case

07 Mar 2008 19:06:45 GMT

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) - Texas oilman David Chalmers was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday after admitting to paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Iraq in connection with the U.N. oil-for-food program.

Chalmers, 54, and his two corporations, Bayoil Supply and Trading Ltd. and Bayoil USA Inc., were sentenced in federal court in Manhattan. Chalmers also was ordered to forfeit $9 million dollars.

He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in August, weeks before he was due to go on trial with Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt. Wyatt was sentenced to a year in prison in November for his role in the oil-for-food scandal.

The $67 billion oil-for-food program -- begun in 1996 and ended in 2003 -- was aimed at easing the impact of sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's government after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The charges against Chalmers, Wyatt and others stemmed from Iraq's requirement from 2000 to 2003 that recipients of oil pay a secret surcharge, in violation of U.N. sanctions and U.S. law, to front companies and bank accounts controlled by the Iraqi government.

The secret payments were not made to the United Nations' monitored bank account from which humanitarian goods could be purchased for the Iraqi people, but in a secret deal with Baghdad outside of the program.

Chalmers was ordered to surrender to a federal prison in Texas by April 30.